alice maz

2024-02-29

I've written several new substack posts since I last updated this feed, the best of which I think are: from paris with love, about turn of the (20th) century lesbian culture and the love between two of my literary and romantic icons, renée vivien and natalie clifford barney. commentary on xunzi's "discourse on heaven", a close reading of one of my favorite chapters of xunzi. and governance ideology, a meditation on civic virtue and republican principles framed around the ai-mediated quasi-democracy of to the stars

happy new year! 2023 was a big year for me, with many new adventures and changes. the biggest being that I moved to bangkok and fell in love. not in that order. also I started smoking again, oops

2022 was the first year in my life I really had both the money and relational freedom to leave the united states, and visiting europe for the first time was really enjoyable, even if it's not a place I could ever happily live. in 2023 I don't think I was in the same country for more than a month and a half at all. it was a really interesting lifestyle change and I ended up doing and seeing a lot

in 2023, my main travel goal was to see southeast asia, a place I've wanted to visit for years. part of it was reading about the region after being adopted into an indonesian guild in a game I played during covid. part of it was a sense of bustle and opportunity, disenchanted with america and feeling like maybe it would be a place with more activity and optimism. looking through my old tweets, I said in july of 2021, after my life in austin had fallen apart and one month before I was due to leave, "tentative life plan is a gap year in an american city I haven't lived in before. then move to southeast asia, start a new work project to devote my all to." I don't have my project yet, but it's nice knowing that is what I ended up doing

I'll always be a new yorker in my blood. whether I was made for it or just adapted to it, I lived in that city for the better part of a decade, and it became a part of me. the density, the speed, the feeling like anything is possible and everything is at arm's reach. after a year of scrappy freelancing after first learning to program, I started looking for my first real tech job, and felt like I had a certain duty to leave. I thought that I was too comfortable, that I liked being there too much. that if I didn't leave now, I'd be there for the rest of my life, and now that my horizons had opened up, it was necessary to go. so I landed a job on the other side of the country, packed up, and moved to sf

coming to bangkok last year was a revelation. I'd almost forgotten what a real city could feel like. sf, austin, and seattle are ghost towns compared to new york and bangkok, and I had gotten so familiar with new york that I just glided through it effortlessly, going to the same places and doing the same things whenever I went back to visit. I stayed in bangkok for a month and loved every minute of it

my favorite thing about bangkok is the energy. it feels so busy and so alive. and, actually unlike new york, it also feels relaxed at the same time. a thing I said, trying to articulate the difference, "new york feels like human suffering is being harvested to build grand cathedrals, bangkok feels like sugar-water is seeping up from the earth and we're all a mass of little ants busily rushing around making the most of it"

when I glide through asok station, everyone weaving through each other's paths like a scifi depiction of a signal-free self-driving intersection, I feel at one with the human organism. when I take a motortaxi down sukhumvit and the driver splits lanes with inches of space to spare between cars, guns the engine when unobstructed, always looking to shave seconds any way he can, I feel the spirit of efficiency. walking up a side street in yaowarat, surrounded by the lights sounds and smells, people cooking on the street, cars angling to squeeze through the crowds, people drinking and chatting, pitching and bartering, I said to my lover, "I never want to go back." she said, "then don't"

I've never as mobile as I was last year, and by the end I'd gotten a bit tired of it. in terms of stamina, I could still keep traveling like that for years. I love the novelty, don't mind the placelessness. it's hard to be socially understimulated knowing at any time you could check into a hostel and have a readymade group of a dozen temporary friends. rather, what I tired of by the end was the pointlessness and distraction. travel started to feel like an exercise in consumption, and I've never been much of a glutton. and also it's impossible to build anything or commit to anything when you don't know what country you'll even be in in a week or two. after I arrived back in bangkok, for the third time, at the end of december, I found the thing I was most excited for was being in the same apartment for longer than a month

but in the in-between time, I visited so many places, and it was nice to see so much and feel so loose and unencumbered. with a backpack and a carry-on, booking one-way tickets rarely more than a few days in advance, I could end up anywhere on a whim or a calling. I had a couple friends crisscrossing the world at the same time, so it was easy to plan to be in the same new city together. it was easy to follow desire, curiosity, or chance, end up in osaka or istanbul, taipei or manila, just to see what happens there, what the texture of the place is like

it was chance that brought me to singapore. chance and mundane logistical preference. I was in chiang mai at the time, trying to get to manila, but every flight out connects through bangkok, and I hate layovers. there were, however, direct flights to singapore. I figured why not fly there, spend a week in a capsule hotel, and see what it was about before heading to my real next destination

I turned out to like singapore more than I expected, and I like it more each time I go. I think at first I found it kind of quiet and kind of quirky. I expected it to feel sterile and confining, based on the popular stereotypes, but actually it's quite warm and cozy, and staying in chinatown this year during spring festival I found it can actually be just as bustling as anywhere. it's a pleasant and charming city with a lot of variety, unique in the world

but what turned out to be much more important, and much more unexpected, was I met a girl there, and fell in love

thinking of her rosetta stone, I'm drawn to think of the coincidences. my irrational bias against connecting flights. a chance encounter on, of all places, bluesky, during the short weeks when it captured the zeitgeist. the circumstances of our lives that drew us to each other in an improbable moment

we spent a heady three days together in the city, and I left for manila wondering if I would ever see her again. she joined me a few days later. spring turned to summer, and I was back in america, disposing of my apartment and closing out my old life for good. through joy and pain, we parted ways a few months later, into our respective uncertain futures. but then we were brought back into each other's lives by the most improbable coincidence of all

now it's 2024, and the future is still uncertain. but I'm excited to go into it. I'm beginning to settle into my new life in bangkok. I haven't decided if I'll stay in thailand long term yet, it depends on where seems best to work. I want to visit vietnam and malaysia this year, and I'd like to see cambodia and indonesia too. I've been learning chinese, and I'm at an hsk3 level after two and half months. I imagine writing a post about my insights into language learning once I'm conversational enough to back it up, but honestly 80% of it is probably just that I'm actually putting in the hours

most importantly, I want to build things. I made my first arduino project, a secret wifi library for my lover, and a v2 may be in order to address myriad unmet user needs and provide comprehensive customer value. I hope to make my first drone soon. if I rent a house here that gives me space for larger projects, I might start with an ebike conversion and see if I can work up to a moped. I'll have to find someone to teach me to weld

overall, things have been really good, and I only expect them to get better. 2023 was such an important year for me. I've grown and changed in ways I never thought possible. I feel comfortable, optimistic, and determined. and I am in love

新年快乐 爱心永恒

2023-03-22

new substack post: you can just do stuff. I summarize lessons from arpa and xerox parc that inform how we aspiring technology cultists might think about putting together new ambitious orgs for science and engineering work that aren't just venture-backed startups. also I write about franny and zooey, stoicism, and a few little anecdotes about kids learning how to affect the world. several people called it heartwarming, which makes me happy

I am now 2/2 for writing articles on airplanes. the first (12 hour) leg of my flight to bangkok had no wifi, and the only thing I put on my new kindle was a free (as in libre) chemistry textbook, major sections of which were free (as in lacking) of images. so when I got tired of trying to imagine space-filling models of molecules based on alt text, I looked through my computer for pdfs to read, and found this one by dominic cummings, and then wrote basically the entire post before touchdown. so if you want me to write more, maybe the solution is more flights

also I'm in bangkok! and planning on going to chiang mai and manila at least as well. I love it here already, it's so fresh and alive and busy and free in a way that no cities in america or europe are. well, maybe easy to say with american money, but yknow. it's also interesting how this place feels like "neutral territory" between the chinese and american empires. like anyone can just show up as they please. it's nice. one of the things I hope comes out of a multipolar world is more liminal space, it'll be interesting. really interested in asean in particular for this, and have loved the vibe of southeast asia from afar for a long time, so it's great to finally be here experiencing it

2023-03-06

I wrote my first substack post: into the void. I used the science fiction novels/serials void star, a memory called empire, and to the stars as a jumping off point to talk about different visions of the future and the desire every fighty autist girl has to spend her life in battle. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, especially since I wrote nearly the entire thing in a single plane ride, after a weekend of drinking and fencing

2022-12-04

I made a substack the other week, which I haven't posted anything to yet, but I expect to eventually. partly because the twitter algorithm makes it impossible to ensure people who explicitly want to see certain posts will ever actually see them, and partly because I hope it will encourage me to write smaller, lower effort things more frequently

I generally write one giant post every year or two, but not because I don't want to write more. usually what ends up happening is something like... I'm inspired to write something but need to do more research, the longer I research the more I link its core concepts to everything else in my knowledge graph, eventually the original topic seems too quaint to bother with, but the broader thing is too heavy to be tractable. what I'd like to do is write things earlier in this process, when I can dash off ideas before they're sodden with meaning. putting things on my website always feels like a Statement, but maybe putting them somewhere else (ie your inbox) will make me feel less like I need to live up to such a lofty standard. and eventually the refinement will result in a body of work of greater scope than I would be able to tackle as individual doorstoppers anyway

2022 has been good to me! this is a refreshing change from 2021, which was without a doubt the most painful and miserable year of my life. 2022 was possibly the best. I've mostly been taking it easy, relaxing and healing I guess. not doing a whole lot

I went to europe for the first time this summer! it was really special, I had a lot of great times with internet friends and people from hostels, and felt a lot of really valuable feelings

in portugal, I went to sintra on a misty day, and hiked from the town up to the moorish castle (which everyone thought I was insane to do, as apparently they all take the bus! I want to hike to cabo da roca next time.) it was pouring rain by time I was done for the day, and instead of following the road back, I cut through the forest, on deserted footpaths that cut through dense trees and occasionally followed the old outer walls. it was one of the most beautiful experiences I've had, the sense of isolation and connection with nature and just joy of being out in the rain

in finland, I met someone from online, and dragged him to a performance of shakespeare's "as you like it" inside an old swedish fortress on an island in the bay. I'd randomly seen an ad for it on a train the day before, but couldn't remember the spelling of the theater to find it online, so I just waited a half hour as trains passed until I saw another one with the same ad to take a picture. I managed to convince him it would likely be in english, half-believing it myself, but I was wrong. he didn't stay long (sorry!) but I pulled up the english script and used proper nouns and character turn-taking to make sure I was in the right place to the finnish. it was fun, and some older ladies were amused at my willingness to do all this just to keep up. on the ferry back, I had an incredible experience where the gold of the midnight sun danced on the deep blue water, and I found I could stop seeing it as light on water and simply see it as color. that, and the forest, made me think of being on acid a bit, although I was completely sober. the experience of being able to turn off the pattern-recognizing machinery in the brain and see things as they actually are, rather than what the represent

in estonia, I met a twitter friend and hung out with hers, spending all night at this cute neighborhood bar that had an impressive selection of beers while also seeming to be run out of a house. the bartenders took turns coming outside to smoke and chat with friends, and the sign announced "if the gate is open, we're open." we went and sat on the castle walls and when I walked by again at 6am back to my hostel, the sign sure was still out. we also did a day trip out to the coast, and to a park with a waterfall, and then went back to town for a pre-midsummer cookout. I was granted honorary estonian status for my unfeigned enthusiasm for baby herring in oil and an incredibly spicy mustard called sinep that I've been unable to order anywhere in america

and then in latvia, was midsummer. I went out to the festival in town with like 20 people from our hostel, and it was incredible. I've been thinking of myself as something of a pagan (at least a "pagan spirit," in the fashion of rene vivien and natalie barney), and seeing an unbroken pagan tradition alive was truly amazing. so much joy and revelry! the bonfire, the music... the park had an amphitheater where music was played on stage all night, with chants and rituals punctuating, and we danced nonstop from 10pm to 4am, with members of our party gradually leaving as the night went on. few locals could speak with us, but they treated us like their own, showing us how to do some of the dances we weren't familiar with. I had to leave before the end, with a flight to catch the next day, but those who stayed said it ended after 5 with chanting to the sun

I also got to experience sauna, in finland and latvia, for the first time. the sauna in helsinki was nice, a traditional smoke sauna (an explanation of the technical and qualitative differences from a wood sauna has been added as an alice dialogue tree) and access to the ocean, but the one in riga was really special. another friend brought me to it, out on an island separate from the city proper, in an area that looks like it's been largely abandoned since the retreat of the soviets. there's a rusted metal and crumbling concrete bridge you have to cross, with gates to prevent people from using it, but bars punched out so people can access it anyway. I wasn't sure I had the right place until I saw a man in a business suit duck through the gap. and then through a field that google calls a road, to a junkyard that hosts an anarchist event space, complete with its own sauna house. mixed-sex, nude, and with a section of the canal lined with sand to be able to cool off right after. after several hours of that, we sat up til late, grilling on the solstice in front of a fire

I think I loved lisbon most of all, though, just as a city. it's too slow and calm for my blood, but a nice place to relax and decompress. when I walk through the twisty streets and steep staircases of alfama or bairro alto, I think of how badly I want to spend a month there with a girl, with nothing but romance on our minds. it is a unbelieveably gorgeous city, the most beautiful I've seen

I've settled in seattle for now, and have more friends here than I ever did in sf or austin. I'll probably pack up and travel for a couple years next, but I expect to be back. seattle has a nice mix of urban and nature that makes it a good home base, I think. and it certainly seems to be the schelling point for weird queers such as myself. I'm thinking I'll go to southeast asia next, which has been a dream of mine for awhile. and more of europe, and south america

sometimes I think about the first half of my 20s, living la boheme, with nothing but precarity and revelry and threat, day-in, day-out. sometimes I feel like, jesus, if only I'd spent that time productively, working and studying, where would I be now? but it's a silly thought. the times I had then made me who I am now, and I would surely be much more cloistered and cautious if I hadn't learned to dare and live. but I also think, more than that maybe, that it was good to run it through my system, because it let me focus on work later without ever wondering what I missed out on. I think of travel in a similar way, now. I need to do it all in a burst, see what actually is out there, so when, or maybe if, I come back, I have no regrets on what I never did

happy thanksgiving, and merry christmas! I'm excited about what 2023 has in store for us all

2022-02-16

I wrote a tour through the general principles of programming, as something of an art and something of a bucket of hammers. I muse on learning styles, knowledge graphs, the contingency and interplay of systems, and the future of the "software engineer": how I think when I think about programming. I also give a working idea of abstraction, debugging, and coin the term "jenga pagoda" for the layers of systems we build to hide other systems

2022-02-15

it's been awhile! crazy couple years, huh? things have been pretty turbulent for for me, but I'm doing my best

2020 was really exciting! everything had a sheen of change and newness. going out in the world, it felt like everything was on the brink of becoming something completely different and unexpected, every day. I don't know if I'll ever have that same feeling of wonder and excitement as I did in march, when the world caught up with what we knew online. biking in deserted streets, exploring abandoned places, waiting for something to happen. it really was kind of magical

besides that, I was working like crazy the whole year. I was reorganizing my git repos the other week, and (at least based on a naive wc) I wrote more code in 2020 than the entire rest of my career combined. and that's including several months devoted exclusively to research. I learned more in 2020 than I ever did before too... despite how it ended, that feeling of having to hit the ground running, having to do everything and handle anything... it taught me so much, not just the things I did, but what I'm capable of

unfortunately things took a turn the next year, and for a variety of reasons, I had to resign from sylph in early 2021. within a few months I also ended my relationships, and with no reason not to, decided I may as well leave austin too. the first half of 2021 was by far the darkest period in my life, and honestly I'm still sifting through the emotional wreckage

but, I'm optimistic. I moved to seattle in the second half of 2021, and like it quite a bit. I've been doing just enough freelancing to pay the bills and no more. I've been calling myself "virtuously unemployed." it's the first time I've been single in half a decade, which affords me a certain degree of freedom that I've missed a lot. I've been traveling more than I ever have, and expect to a lot more. I've been reading a lot. I'm not working on anything exciting, and I won't have the spirit for "real work" back in me for awhile, but I'm looking forward to what the future holds

anyway! last week I finally wrote a thing I've been meaning to for awhile. a sort of willy wonka tour through what I consider to be the fundamentals of programming, aimed at providing context and background to new-ish coders familiar mostly with the rote mechanics, but who haven't built up their feel for the lay of the land. the way I think about things may well be too idiosyncratic and personal for other people to find much utility in. but, we'll see!

aside from that, I started reserializing a thing I wrote over a decade ago, a europa universalis narrative after-action report titled pine bamboo and plum. starting with the red turban rebellion, and ending about 150 years later, I basically try to set up a stable "concert of china," with the restriction that there is no "westernization," and instead the crucible of competition and conflict leads to a china that never "falls behind" europe at all, ushering in a bipolar geopolitics from the dawn of the sage of exploration

it ends abruptly, albeit on a high note, before I could put my plans into full effect. and I likewise had to stop reserializing it when my life abruptly exploded last year. but I would like to finish that, probably all at once, with an epilogue to tie things off

oh, I also went to hereticon in january! it was easily the best trip I've taken, maybe ever. a veritable paradise for an extroverted nerd. I feel like I ran into 50 friends I hadn't expected to see, and made like 100 more. I talked myself speechless (voiceless?) every day and night, then drank tea with honey and lemon all morning every morning to scrape together enough voice to do it all over again. I might write more about it at some point, it was just so so so good. I need more of that energy in my life, being around people with weird interests who can share them at length, who don't need tons of context to keep up with my insane ramblings about my own pet topics, and who are just super fun and super optimistic about what we are capable of doing

it also inspired me to dust off some other things I've wanted to write, things I felt I couldn't do proper justice to while devoting all my best brain cycles to the startup. I want to write about classical chinese philosophy and its applicability to the present, about narratives that drive society, all my big historical ideas I'm so fond of

2021 was hell but I'm doing a lot better now, and excited to see where things go now. everything feels so full of light

I'll post the programming thing in a couple days. let's work hard and have a great year!